Ronald Reagan

I don't know about you, but I didn't think the most interesting news tidbit yesterday was that Heather Forsyth will become the new "Wildrump" leader, Preston Manning's peculiar apology for accidentally uniting the right, the government's sneaky tuition fee increases, or even the poll showing the Progressive Conservatives lead massively despite public disapproval of their sleazy deal with the Wildrose caucus.

No, it was the breathless revelation by Wildrose-turned-Tory MLA Gary Bickman that Premier Jim Prentice is "a disciple" of Friedrich Hayek.

Every few years, Michael Cooper seems to pop onto the national news radar. The first time, it was as a political oddity, a sort of human-interest story with an edge.

The story appeared under a headline in the National Post that read, "Not your average high school senior: 'Blood sport' of politics has lured Michael Cooper most of his 18 years."

That was 2002. Now it's 2014 and Mr. Cooper is neither a high school student nor an 18-year-old any more. He's a 30-year-old lawyer who appears to harbour deeply conservative views -- although he has successfully kept discussion of what he thinks, particularly about social conservative issues such as LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights, well off the radar.

While the Canadian Taxpayers Federation claims to be a "tax watchdog" that opposes waste and advocates transparency in government, evidence suggests its principal purposes are to provide partisan support for the Harper Government, fulfill the corporate agenda and undermine the rights of working people.

The July 2 Alberta Diary post on the CTF's disgracefully misogynistic and personal attack on a group of promising young Canadian scholars for the crime of being awarded scholarships provides an example of the former.

Today let's take a look at the evidence of the CTF's strong anti-worker, anti-union bias, as well as the group's lack of transparency about its own supporters and objectives.

Oh my -- quelle horreur! -- naughty Britons still appalled by the depredations visited upon their country by Margaret Thatcher's government have shocked and appalled the world by pushing "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!" to the top of the charts.

In case you missed it, the former British prime minister, who was in office from 1979 to 1990, died on Monday at 87. But it took until yesterday for the song from the Wizard of Oz -- an apt metaphor itself for the operational side of neocon governments everywhere -- to mischievously reach No. 1 on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s weekly music chart.

Here in 14 words is the conundrum that faces the Progressive Conservative government of Alberta Premier Alison Redford: you can be progressive, or you can be conservative, but you can't be both.

So which is it?

The problem that confronts Redford's PCs is that they aren't really sure themselves.

Progressive? Or Conservative? Great taste? Or less filling? Breath mint? Or candy mint?

This, it is said here, is the source of the real pain that shows through the Redford Government's commentary about how we all need to reduce our expectations for the provincial budget scheduled for introduction on Thursday, March 7.

For the second time in four years the U.S. electorate has voted against neoliberalism. The scale and the meaning of the victory has been underestimated as conservatives and liberals alike emphasize the vote count for the Democrats and the Republicans. Roughly 61,900,000 people voted for Obama and 58,650,000 chose Romney. The apparent proximity of these numbers should not obscure other understandings of the victory.

By the sound of it, the international observers of Sunday's Ukrainian parliamentary elections did manage to catch the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovich getting up to some undemocratic naughtiness.

Their report, which the international media yesterday described as scathing, accused Yanukovich's Party of Regions of unfairly benefiting from excessive money from supporters, abuse of government resources to make it look good and heavily biased media coverage in its favour.

Like Sir John A. Macdonald, a British subject I was born and now, apparently, a British subject I may die. What's with that?

Or did I fail to get it right yesterday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his gang of so-called Conservatives have decided to give up he trappings of independent nationhood and, just as the Scots are about to head out for the Highlands, go in with the British on a joint-venture diplomatic service?

As goes California, so goes the nation -- the nation in the normal scheme of things being what the world knows as the Good Ole U.S.A.

For many practical reasons that all of us instinctively understand up here north of the 49th Parallel, and even in those parts of Canada south of the 49th, as goes California, so goes Canada too.

I refer, of course, to the steep downward spiral in which the Republican Party finds itself in that large and populous West Coast state -- a place big enough to be a leading nation all on its own and home, arguably to the American image, if not the American soul.

In the Republicans' troubles in California, it is said here, we see a reflection of the coming decline of Canada's Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.